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Focus on Physics

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Editor's Corner

This paper examines challenges in student groupwork, emphasizing the impact of collaborative learning dynamics on outcomes. Addressing uneven participation and unintentional exclusion, it explores nuanced aspects of perceived student status, revealing its role in perpetuating disparities. Understanding collaborative learning intricacies is vital for educators implementing strategies to support effectiveness. The study emphasizes the task of managing group dynamics and the need to address challenges aligned with educational standards like NGSS Science and Engineering Practices. To disrupt status perceptions, the paper advocates for randomized grouping and a reevaluation of roles through randomization. Actionable norms are proposed to encourage collaboration, while the multiple abilities treatment urges a broader view of how to define “smart”. The concept of "groupworthy" tasks stresses inclusive, intellectually challenging curriculum. The paper concludes that recognizing and addressing perceived status empowers teachers to make practical changes, fostering an inclusive learning environment. The strategies presented are flexible tools for educators to incrementally impact student status and collaboration.

Long after a hurricane passes over and through any region or coastal area, the memories of it often linger. There may be visual reminders of the storm and the day lives may have been changed, or lost, forever. Hurricanes can be long-lived storms. They can also be structurally large, so their impact can cover enormous swaths of land and water, often with large populations in the way, particularly coastal areas. Hurricanes are the only officially named natural disasters, as well as the only hazards whose names can be retired. This unique characteristic provided us an opportunity to develop an activity that allows students to gain a greater understanding and appreciation into the: a) climatology of hurricanes, b) change over time with respect to naming and their frequency, and c) socio-scientific impact of the storms. In this activity students make sense of various data by analyzing, comparing and contrasting, and thinking critically about the various patterns that emerge, enhancing scientific literacy as well as gaining an appreciation for the phenomenon and the research around tropical systems.

The vision behind the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) is that all students engage in explaining phenomena and designing solutions with three-dimensional learning. Authentic sensemaking involves opportunities for learners to share, analyze, and critique ideas in collaborative groups. However, it can be challenging to structure classroom discourse so that all students actively participate. This article outlines the success of two teachers using Group Learning Routines (GLR), or peer-to-peer discussion protocols, to support diverse learners. The routines are embedded in the New Visions for Public Schools Biology Curriculum which is open source and storyline-based. The unit described here engages students in an exploration of the mismatch between how our bodies and our environments function. Embedded routines structure student talk throughout a learning sequence culminating in class consensus discussion, in which students collaboratively decide on a class-wide explanation of the phenomenon. Resources, such as rubrics, descriptions of the routines, and example student work are provided to support classroom implementation.

This lesson allows students to engage in sense-making through the cross-cutting analysis of the form and function of pollen, carried by pollinators. Students observe the microscopic features of pollen and how insects transport these fine, but critical grains of life. Students initiate sense making of pollen and pollinators by collecting evidence of their complementary forms and functions. By creating working prototypes of pollinators and the pollen they transport, students reason the importance of nature’s complementary engineering design. Students understand that in creating working prototypes, the most efficient designs are those that mimic nature (biomimicry). Pollen needs specifically shaped structures to be carried by pollinators. Native bees are specifically engineered to carry maximum amounts of pollen, and students should be conscious of our dependency on bees to pollinate many of our food sources. Using the 6-E model allows students to engage with nature, explore with their hands, engineer a bee prototype, and develop cognitive skills as they reason through the design process.

Two modules were designed for high school science students to investigate the performance of a rain garden installed on school property. The rain garden, a green infrastructure system which allows soil infiltration, was installed to reduce impacts to urban streams and can increase the community’s resilience to flooding. Scientists actively conducting research at the rain garden involved students in assessing the rain garden's performance, where students learned new technical skills, gained varied experiences in collecting and analyzing data, were exposed to new STEM careers, and learned about local issues that impact their community. In the first module, students conducted a land survey and calculated the volumetric capacity of the rain garden. In the second module, students collected rainfall data using rain gauges and analyzed various aspects of rainfall collection. Although these modules were focused on a rain garden already installed on school property and were done in conjunction with ongoing scientific research, they can be implemented at schools without this mitigation strategy present and without official research being conducted. The surveying module can easily be applied to measure any land surface feature, and the rain gauge module can be implemented anywhere as it is focused on rainfall collection.

 

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